


here's to whatever comes

by voksen



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Convent Husbands, Domestic Fluff, Gen, M/M, Shippy Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-12
Updated: 2013-07-12
Packaged: 2017-12-19 06:43:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/880656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voksen/pseuds/voksen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Late one summer night, Father Madeleine and Father Fauchelevent share the season's first melon and a few words to go with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	here's to whatever comes

Fauchelevent sank into his chair with a sigh of relief and a jangle of his bell; the night was warm, coming up on midsummer as it was, and even with Madeleine's strong back to help him the work was hard. It seemed harder, lately; the melons were larger than they had been in many years, fat and fine and nearly-ripe, and there were more of them, as well -- and of course Fauchelevent himself was growing older and stiffer. 

He closed his eyes for just a moment, to help himself stretch; when he opened them at a gentle touch on his knee, Madeleine was kneeling before him, untying the bell. Somehow there was already a bottle of wine and one of the early melons on the table, though Fauchelevent had not heard Madeleine move to set them out. He yawned again, as Madeleine slipped the knot free and crossed the room to hang Fauchelevent's bell at the door next to his own.

"Thank you," he said presently, once he'd shaken the wool from between his ears, and busied himself pouring out the wine for each of them, taking a deep draft when he'd done.

Madeleine came promptly back and, sitting down in his own chair, raised his glass to Fauchelevent before drinking. When he had had finished, he set down his cup - Fauchelevent refilled them both - and, taking his knife, split the melon neatly down the middle. 

They had argued that night - as much as Fauchelevent could ever persuade Madeleine to argue - whether it was ripe or not, for it was early yet and the melon was smaller than most of the rest, but to Fauchelevent's ear it had produced quite a pleasing hollow thump when he had accidentally knocked it with a stone in turning it.

As Madeleine sliced into it, the little room filled up with sweetness, the lush dark scent of a perfectly ripe melon picked under the moonlight, and Fauchelevent grinned widely in victory. "You see!" he said, "Father Madeleine! I know you know all there is to know about nettles and wild apple-trees and everything in between, but the -- deuce if I haven't learned a few things about my melons myself!"

Madeleine smiled back, small but genuine. His smiles were coming more often lately, Fauchelevent thought, between this quiet life and that little cherub of his. Strange to think that such a reclusive life should suit Monsieur le Maire, once known far and wide. But then, come to think of it, Madeleine never had seemed particularly happy in Montreuil; not as an inventor, not as a businessman (the bitterness had long gone out of Fauchelevent's thoughts, driven out by the silent dust of convent life and the memory of a shattered cart) and not even as mayor.

"Well; shall we try it, Father Fauchelevent, to see if you are right?" Madeleine said; his eyes were on the melon as he cut two even wedges from a half, but the smile lingered in them.

"It would be a waste not to," Fauchelevent agreed, taking the slice Madeleine offered and biting in. The juice was thick and sweet, warm from the air outside, the flesh of the melon perfectly crisp. He gave an approving nod, his mouth over-full from expectation, and watched Madeleine take a smaller bite -- though the melon was ripe enough that Madeleine had to wipe his chin anyway, to keep from dripping onto his shirt.

Fauchelevent swallowed and wiped his own mouth with the back of his hand. A slow suspicion was beginning to rise in his mind, born of the simple pleasure and complete lack of either rue or surprise on Madeleine's face. He finished the slice, alternating melon with wine, mulling it over, and by the time he had finished, he knew it. "The devil," he said, "--you knew it. You knew that melon was ripe."

Madeleine, his mouth half-hidden behind the melon slice, said nothing. He still had something of the air of the saint to Fauchelevent's eyes, but no longer the cold, incomprehensible stone miracle he had once seemed; he was warm as the summer night, as alive as Fauchelevent himself.

"Ha," Fauchelevent said, and shook his head. He took another few bites. It was uncommonly sweet; to sit here in the dark with his friend, the full moon lighting their room in silver, the whole melon to go between them -- it was good. Picking up Madeleine's knife, he cut another pair of slices and pushed one across the table. The sheer happy comfort stirred older memories in him; he leaned back into his chair, letting it support his old bones, and sighed.

"'How did he come here?' I said to myself -- you remember, yes? I asked you if you had fallen from Heaven." The years had turned that dreadful confusion into something blunted, round-edged and unbothersome. Fauchelevent still had not the slightest idea of how Madeleine had conjured himself and his girl into the convent; since that same hour he had turned his mind away from it; he had accepted Madeleine's presence, and it had become more than a comfort.

Across the table, Madeleine shifted uneasily, switching his melon rind for the new slice, but not eating, simply turning it in his hands. "Fauchelevent," he said, his voice low and uncomfortable as it had not been in a very long time.

"No," Fauchelevent said, waving his own melon slice at Madeleine to forestall the warning-off he knew was coming; Madeleine's heart grew softer, his smiles warmer, but his boundaries had never changed, and Fauchelevent had no desire to uproot what grew so deeply buried for no reason greater than idle curiosity. "No, no. What I mean to say is that I did not care then -- I do not care now whether it was a trick or an angel or the devil that brought you. You saved my life--" Madeleine moved as if in dismissal, "--no, and without thinking twice. You came from God then, and," he paused again, nodding awkwardly at the melon and the room as a whole, "you have come from God now, pardine, even if I had to dig you out of the grave for it." That, too, was a memory dulled by age, changed from horror into something almost near affection.

There was a wrinkle of confusion on Madeleine's brow, but better that than discomfort; in any case Fauchelevent pressed on: "You are more than a saint," he said, "you have been a brother to me, and not only by borrowing his name. I don't care if you're Ultime or Madeleine or anyone else, or if you're a saint or a murderer, or where you came from to find yourself here -- or to find yourself in Montreuil--"

He found himself stopped by Madeleine's work-hardened fingers warm against the wrist of the hand that held the melon. There was honest dirt beneath the fingernails; they were slightly sticky with juice; they rested gently on his skin.

"Thank you," Madeleine said, and no more than that.

**Author's Note:**

> [DVD commentary](http://vouksen.tumblr.com/post/55519106373/because-i-love-you-i-have-done-the-entirety-of) here, if you're interested in how the sausage is made. :V


End file.
